SonicWALL SOHO TZW

With all the fuss surrounding wireless network security, it's surprising no-one has thought to integrate industrial-strength firewall capabilities into an access point. Well SonicWALL claims an industry first with the SOHO TZW, which integrates an 802.11b wireless access point with a packet-inspection firewall and, more importantly, allows IPSec-encrypted VPNs to be enforced for wireless clients, ensuring secure communications.

The TZW provides Fast Ethernet ports for LAN and WAN connections, but no DMZ port. LEDs across the front panel show link status, speed and activity for the local and broadband ports, plus link status and activity for wireless connections. The wireless action centres on an internal Actiontec 802MIP mini PCI card, which supports standard 802.11b operations.

As usual, SonicWALL makes light work of installation, as you just point a web browser at the unit's default IP address and the appliance automatically loads a Wizard for initial configuration. Select the type of operation, decide on your mode of broadband Internet access, add an IP address for the LAN port, and away you go. The web interface is simple to use too, with each function grouped neatly in a sidebar for easy selection, and another batch of Wizards is provided for setting up network access rules, wireless security and VPNs.

Wireless security options are equally impressive. You can opt for the less secure WEP encryption or enforce the use of IPSec-based VPNs using WiFiSec. With the latter activated, any wireless client is only able to access the LAN over an encrypted link. Setting this up is simple, since SonicWALL provides a global VPN client that does all the hard work, together with a ready-made connection profile. It's possible to add stronger access control by activating MAC address filtering for wireless clients, which stops unknown MAC addresses associating with the TZW. On top of this, the TZW provides Wireless Guest Service (WGS), which protects the wireless-to-WAN connection by allowing mobile users to have authenticated Internet access. If the TZW spots a wireless client loading a web browser, it prompts them for a username and password before creating a secure HTTP session.

Firewall protection is active by default and the TZW automatically allows all traffic to pass from the LAN to the WAN and wireless connection, but blocks any sessions originating from the WAN side. This will be enough for most companies, although you can create your own custom rules, and the documentation offers plenty of help, along with a few examples. It's also possible to block all ActiveX controls, Java applets, cookies and web proxies and to create a list of trusted domains that you don't want these rules to apply to. There are plenty of optional features too, as the TZW supports SonicWALL's CFS, Websense Enterprise and N2H2 web-content filtering services, and you can add anti-virus measures and email filtering as well.

The SOHO TZW is a smart security appliance that offers a huge range of valuable features and yet still retains the ease of use that typifies SonicWALL's firewall products. Why wait for the wireless community to get its security act together when you can use IPSec-encrypted VPNs instead?

Author: Dave Mitchell